Holbrooke legacy one of defying odds

U.N ambassador fought to reshape global policy toward Africa

Published: Saturday, January 06, 2001

UNITED NATIONS {AP} As a diplomatic troubleshooter Richard Holbrooke loves challenges, and during his 17-month stint as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, he took on some of the toughest from reforming the United Nations to trying to bring peace to Africa.

"What's the point of being in the government if you don't try to make things better, which means trying to change things," Holbrooke said in an interview as he reflected on his U.N. tour and his plans now that the Republicans have won the White House.

Holbrooke's most important U.N. victory came four weeks before he was to leave office: He persuaded 188 countries to overhaul U.N. financing and reduce U.S. payments to the world body.

After a grueling 14-month battle in Congress over his nomination, Holbrooke was a man in a hurry to make his mark when he arrived at the United Nations in September 1999. He had successfully brokered the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia and served as President Clinton's special envoy to Yugoslavia on Kosovo.

But he faced serious obstacles at the United Nations.

A global outcry over the U.S. failure to pay $1.6 billion in U.N. dues had seriously undermined U.S. influence at the United Nations, and the Security Council was deeply divided over Iraq and the U.S.-led bombing of Yugoslavia without council authorization.

A hard-driving fighter with sharply honed diplomatic skills, Holbrooke wasted no time in tackling the U.S. debt, which many observers said was the single most important issue to resolve if he wanted to restore U.S. relations with the organization.

"People said, 'It can't be done.' As everybody who worked with me knew, that was the best way to get me to accept an issue," Holbrooke said.

By his own estimate, Holbrooke spent a third of his tenure trying to get U.N. members to agree to revamp the U.N. payment scale for the first time in over two decades. That's because Congress demanded that U.S. payments be cut before it would pay a major chunk of back dues.

After a year of shuttling to Washington and a last-minute lobbying effort by the Clinton administration, the General Assembly approved a budget deal in December that came very close to meeting the congressional demands.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock said the deal "would not have happened if Richard Holbrooke had not been driving the negotiations to see it settled."

"He's a bulldog for the globe," said Timothy Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, which disburses Ted Turner's $1 billion pledge to U.N. causes. "The relationship between the U.S. and the U.N. is the most fundamental cooperative relationship in New York, and Holbrooke has gone a long way to getting that relationship sorted out and back on an even keel."

As his other U.N. priority, Holbrooke chose Africa.

He spent his month as president of the Security Council trying to focus a global spotlight on the continent's problems, which he saw firsthand on two separate trips.

He invited the presidents of the warring factions in Congo to the Security Council to pledge to stop fighting. He brought in Nelson Mandela to brief ambassadors on efforts to forge peace in Burundi. Vice President Al Gore presided over a council meeting on the havoc the AIDS epidemic has wreaked in Africa.

Holbrooke later ushered through a resolution declaring AIDS not just a health problem but a global security threat, particularly in Africa.

"I think it was historically, and morally and politically and economically correct," Holbrooke said during a recent interview at his office at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. "We showed the Africans that we paid attention that Africa matters."

Despite the fanfare, Holbrooke has little concrete progress to show for the effort. Congo is still at war and new crises have erupted in Sierra Leone and between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

While acknowledging disappointment, Holbrooke stands by his decision to focus global attention and U.S. attention on Africa, which he calls a work-in-progress.

"I'm absolutely certain that if we hadn't done it, things would be much, much worse," Holbrooke said.

But he acknowledges more could have been done.

In the Middle East, Holbrooke led a behind-the-scenes U.S. campaign to give Israel the chance to be represented on U.N. bodies in New York for the first time in 50 years.